Customer Reviews

The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought this book preparatory to a month in Ireland, as a mental/political exercise (aware of former banning). I couldn't put it down, and got three hours or less sleep for three nights in a row. I foisted it on my mom with warnings not to begin it on a weeknight, she got hooked on a Tuesday and went downhill too. We talked for days about how tightly written it was, how clean, spare, descriptive, full of foreshadowing, and painful to any woman who knows what it is to be centally disappointed by a man. Yet the book never whines, it never pushes itself sobbing on your shoulder. It sits in dignity with sadness.

Very quietly and methodically tragic, in the Irish way that says you do not whine about tragedy, you do not make fuss of it, you just simply pray a bit and go on. What makes the book so very valuable and unusual is that it applies the Irish knack for storytelling and forthright 'un-tragic' tragedy to women's lives and women's stories. It is both an Irish book full of water and woodsmoke, and a women's book in all its painful honesty and revelatory grace.

Please read.

If you happen to think that being Irish would be just the nicest cosiest thing in the world, and you want to keep thinking that, then don't read this book. If you want to read a genuine unputdownable masterpiece, though, and laugh and cry your way from the first page to the last, then go for it.

I might also add, though, that if you're a husband, like me, it's only fair to warn you that this book will search your conscience pretty thoroughly.

i heard an interview with edna o'brien on npr's FRESH AIR and was impressed with her style. i read the trilogy because of the interview, not because of the Ireland component. this book is poignant, funny, sincere, a page-turner, and honest. i keep looking at the copyright date and not believing that it was written years ago. this book is a definite breath of fresh air!

For the longest time, I didn't get Edna O'Brien. Her writing was so highly praised, but I couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about. Her characters were all so repressed and their interactions so brittle that I found her stories difficult to get into and generally boring. But as I embarked on my ongoing Irish tear, I was determined to try again. This time I had no trouble becoming interested in Kate and her childhood friend Baba or their lives in rural Ireland, in convent school and in Dublin. Ireland in the 1950s was extremely repressed, which is one reason this book was banned. But its portrait of a place and a people seems spot on. I think of this novel as a fictional twin of John McGahern's memoir All Will Be Will, which covers the same time period from a man's perspective. For Irish-Americans raised on sentimental songs and movies about the old sod, O'Brien's fiction is an important corrective. She is an excellent writer of spare but evocative prose. The Country Girls is the first novel of a trilogy, and I look forward to completing the set.

I have read some exerpts from Edna O'Brien's writings and was looking forward to reading this trilogy. I found all three books too wordy and the main characters too annoying to enjoy my reading, perhaps because I didn't relate to Ireland of the 1960s. The fact that the books were considered scandalous and were banned when published intrigued me but they just didn't hold my interest as anything more than period writing curiosity.

I was enthralled by this book and read it faster than most books I have read. There were nights I stayed up really late just to find out what happened next.

The Country Girls Trilogy is an interesting take on Irish sociology. As a woman of Irish descent, I could relate to the stultifying atmosphere of the Catholic church which both controls by guilt and conformity. The nuns at the convent exemplify this, as well as the visit from Caithleen's father and priest after her escape to her lover's home.

The second and third parts of the trilogy continue with Caithleen's eventual marriage and motherhood in the same vein. She never really becomes capable of decision making. Her melancholy persona becomes even more so, and by the end of the three books, her story becomes rather tedious. It ends, "not with a cry, but a whimper."

All in all, I liked the first book of the trilogy the best; each book following became more and more laborious to read. At the end I had invested so much time that I had to finish it.

An interesting read. It is a look at the harm done to young women at the hands of those who want to control rather than guide them.

The trilogy of three self contained novels features two Irish country girls, Baba (Bridget) and Caithleen (Kate) from teenage schooldays through marriages and beyond. the novel is a very well rounded view of vulnerable women and their relationships with men, as fathers, boyfriends, priests etc and husbands. We see a satirical picture through Baba's eyes. Baba is a survivor, and great fun, but rash and impulsive. Through Kate we see beautiful, lyrical prose about the Irish countryside, and we see the pathos of her mother's marriage, where mother and daughter are both victims of domestic violence, and have no love or respect, as a result, for Kate's drunken father. The third book, Girls in Their Married Bliss, was banned for many years in Ireland because of its realistic picture of relationships of husbands and wives, in Ireland, and elswehere, no doubt. I like the trilogy because of Baba's acid sparkling wit, which often packs a lot of truth, complemented by Kate's beautiful dreamy descriptions, and expression of her feelings, and a lingering sense of pathos. She could be seen as weak character, or as some one damaged by an irresponsible, drunken, abusive father. Baba can seem flippant and heartless,but she always rallys to help Kate, where needed, and they get into both amusing and pathetic situations. Baba's sharp wit balances Kate's dreamy lyricism. I think women and men should read the trilogy, and pause, maybe with nostalgia, to think about relationships generally, with friends, lovers, partners and family, and gain a deeper insight. The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue (Plume)

Words and contents of this book bring back many memories of life in Ireland. The peat bogs and the life of people in a small village where everybody knows everybody. An easy to read book.